“You can see he lost some weight,” Kuznetsov said to El-Bashir. “Every year you’re trying to be better. You change something in the summer. Ovi’s like other guys, too—he wants to change something, right?

“It’s always good when you see the guys who are 30 or more years, they know they have to practice hard,” Kuznetsov added. “For me, when you get a couple more kilograms, it’s a couple practices [to lose it]. But for older guys that takes like five, six days. That’s tough. That’s why the older guys have to work more and more and more.”